Sony Pictures Entertainment prepares to settle claims from its current and past employees which would prompt the company to pay up to an amount that could reach a total of $8 million.
Filed on Monday in a Los Angeles based U.S. District Court, the settlement was brought in after the company suffered from a massive attack more than a year ago wherein U.S. officials have cited North Korea as the main players.
Prior to the attack, the company was preparing to launch a comedy film which talked about the fictional assassination plot against the leader of North Korea. The movie was strongly opposed by the latter which has even described it as an act of terrorism.
North Korea has denied several times of its involvement in the hack which has resulted to a number of compromised accounts of Sony employees.
According to the former employees, Sony knew beforehand that its data protection measures are not sufficient which led them to suffer breaches two times prior to the 2014 attack. Sony, they claimed, made a "business decision to accept the risk" of losses that is connected with the hack.
Other claims involved how identity thieves tried to use the victims' credit card details and monetize on their personal data through sites that cater to black market transactions. Sony argued that the case shouldn't be classified as a class action lawsuit and had stressed that none of the major plaintiffs had experienced financial loss from the hacks.
Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Entertainment, described the settlement as "an important positive step forward in putting the cyber-attack firmly behind us."
"I think that there was not that much impact from a business perspective" said Kazuo Hirai, President and CEO of Sony Corporation
There was impact for a very short time on the morale of the employees, but I think they have come around. We did learn some lessons with becoming more robust in terms of security, and we have done that. We have come out being a stronger and more resilient business."
Sony will have to pay up to $4.5 million to the current and past employees who fell victims to the attack. Likewise lawyers will then be paid up to $3.5 million.
"It is a surprisingly small fund, considering the extent of the breach," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Washington, DC-based Electronic Privacy Information Center.
While Sony has agreed to pay up, the company didn't admit that it was liable or had committed a wrongdoing in the settlement.
